Trump targets Amazon in call for postal service to hike prices
U.S. President Donald Trump targeted Amazon on Friday in a call for the country's postal service to raise prices of shipments in order to recoup costs, picking another fight with the online retail giant he has criticized in the past. "Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
The U.S. Postal Service, which runs at a big loss, is an independent agency within the federal government and does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses, according to its website. The organization makes up a significant portion of the $1.4 trillion U.S. delivery industry. Other players include United Parcel Service Inc and Fedex Corp.
[...] Amazon has shown interest in the past in shifting into its own delivery service. In 2015, the company spent $11.5 billion on shipping, 46 percent of its total operating expenses that year. In October, Bloomberg reported that Amazon was testing its own delivery service to move products more quickly out of its overcrowded warehouses and make more of them available for free two-day delivery. However, Amazon said at the time that it was using the same carrier partners to offer the program as it has used for years, including the U.S. Postal Service, UPS and FedEx.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 31 2017, @03:59AM
Let us recall that this accounting change happened because the USPS had huge unfunded retirement fund [cnbc.com] liabilities. It was not in profit years ago as a result. Here's a defense of the practice:
Sure, it is a Republican politician defending the practice. But you seem to have completely missed the stated reason for the law. You then wrote:
While the private world has played similar games with pension funds, an valid accounting would include unfunded pension liabilities as liabilities on the books. It's very easy to show profits when one ignores liabilities. This commonly results in spectacular failures in the private world (such as the decline of auto and airline businesses in the US, who both have substantial problems with retirement fund liabilities).